X-Men: First Class character trailers

May 5, 2011 - By Liam Goodwin

In interviews before the release of comic book movies (and others) we usually get actors and directors talking about character development being the driving force of the movie, but more often than not we just end up with dialogue that simply moves us onto the next action scene.

Today MTV have released three new character trailers for X-Men: First Class which give us a good look at the personalities and story arcs of Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Havok (Lucas Till) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult). They are quite long (1 minute each) and contain a lot of this ‘character development’ directors always talk about, so avoid them if you don’t want to be spoiled.

Played by Caleb Landry Jones, the mutant known as Banshee is actually Sean Cassidy, whose power manifests itself in a powerful “sonic scream” that he can use as a weapon or — as you can see in the introduction trailer — a method of flight.

Played by Lucas Till, Havok is able to generate powerful “plasma blasts” that — as you can also see in the trailer — he has difficulty controlling. He’s eventually outfitted with a uniform that allows him to focus the energy he releases from the his body into a powerful beam.

Played by Nicholas Hoult, Beast reveals the true nature of his mutation in the above trailer, and we get a peek at the drastic changes he underwent in his early years with Charles Xavier.

X-Men is unique in the comic and movie world as it has many characters to develop, instead of just one main one such as in Batman and Spider-Man. Some fans of the X-Men trilogy were annoyed that Wolverine’s dominance on-screen left other characters will little development and no time to shine, but with Wolverine out of the way it looks like Vaughn has been able to give each X-Men a purpose and reason to be there, instead of just for marketing purposes (see Angel in X3 and most of the secondary characters in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.)

X-Men: First Class will be released June 3rd in the US and June 1st in the UK.